Cyberpunk, Steampunk, and Siliconpunk

[yoyojedi]

(This ramble started in the middle of my previous post, but it seemed to be a separate subject.)

Although I don't hate Steam Punk as he does, Design Observer is getting at something when he says:The answer must be more interesting than adding wood veneers to your laptop or turning a mouse into a contraption of gears that looks more like a medieval

Comments

[sgtred]

What I like most about steam punk (or whatever description something like this gets put under), I really like - no love - that it makes an ordinary every day functional device into ART.

This is what makes us human.

Anybody can take a board, nail or tie four sticks to the bottom of it, and HUZAH! you have a table. But, to take it to the level that someone will make something as ordinary as mouse into... extreme beauty... makes me orgasm.

Whenever I see an old beige plastic box to house a computer, my soul cries and I want to slap some fake wood, glitter glue, or whatever the fuck I can find to it.

[yoyojedi]

I totally hear you, and like I said, I think that mouse is a work of art. And like I said, I don't hate Steampunk as that guy does.

As a personal aesthetic preference, I'd like to see more futurism and more cutting or bleeding edge tech. Accelerometers and Piezoelectric stuff... home brew circuitry.

I like the leather and some of the anachronistic stylings... I just wish more effort was spent on building a better future. Not building a better past.

[nait]

I think it's important to keep in mind that Steampunk is more than just a design aesthetic. It's also an exploration of what science and technology may have produced if nature really worked in some of the various, interesting, and quite mistaken ways we assumed it did. Additionally, it acknowledges and praises our society's pursuit of that knowledge no matter how hackneyed that pursuit was at times.

It's not some outcry against mass production or Artisan's Lament or any of that bullshit. Dude at DO needs to take a pill.

As it's applied, though, it really prizes form far more than function in a lot of cases, and it bothers me a little when I see it happen. That mouse is a fucking mess.

[yami]

"I'd like to see more of a future-looking-view."
I'd like to see more people trying to come up with something new rather than copy the past. These days they aren't evening re-inventing it, they're just straight up replicating it.

fuck retro-anything.

... also, that mouse is cool, so is your project, good luck.